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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Someone Else's Adventures in Rust Dyeing

Some one who took my rust dyeing class at the Rosemont show email this today:

Took the plunge yesterday with my accumulated rust stuff. Found a cast iron skillet at the thrift store, and a big chunk of rusty metal on the side of the road. My friend says it's "sculpture" in itself.Dug through my bin of misc. fabric (all stuff that's not quilting cotton) and found lots of diverse stuff. Layered it in the skillet with iron oxide filings, old square nails, and the rusty sculpture. Added salt with each layer. Covered it with a plastic bag and put it on my deck. Peeked frequently throughout the day and again today. So exciting!Today I took everything out and inspected it, refolded and re-layered. Interesting effects already.Mistakes made:- Should have washed the skillet. Whatever the last owner fried in it is now floating in the water. Eeoooo!- Need to find a better way to distribute the filings. Sprinkling it from the container and from my hand is not giving me the effect I want. Some areas gray and crusty. When I re-layered the concoction, those are the areas I rubbed around, picked off and tried to redistribute. Maybe a salt shaker from the dollar store.Good things:- Love the marks the nails are making.- Love the soft effect of the sculpture. BTW I wrapped a braided cord around it. We'll see.Now if I could just find that bag of rust chips I found last month at the base of a fallen-down mailbox. Yes, rust is everywhere!

The picture of the day is of someone who took the class last year and the piece she made in the class.

1 comment:

Lois, I wanted to contact you... thank you for your note on my blog.. re: rust dying. Such fun.. and I have been crawling around your blog for some time.Do you know of a way to stop the oxidization so that no holes will eventually occur?I have thought of posing the question to the QA list.I am wanting to do some wall art pieces with this.Carole